The burdens on computer network administrators have been rapidly growing both in volume and in complexity. Chief among these burdens is the need for corporate administrators to manage their so-called "Distributed Computing Environment" cells. DCE is a known distributed environment that has been widely implemented using software available from the Open Systems Foundation (OSF). In a distributed computing environment, a group of machines is typically referred to as a "domain." An OSF DCE domain is called a "cell." A DCE cell is often a complex environment involving hundreds of machines in many locations.
DCE offers many management challenges to the network administrator. The management tasks are quite broad in scope, ranging from defining new accounts to retrieving the status of DCE servers. In the past, there has no been convenient user interface by which the administrator can perform these various management tasks in an efficient, consistent and reliable manner. For example, to define a DCE account, the administrator must create a DCE principal, add the principal to a group, add the principal to an organization, and then finally create the account. This operation requires access to multiple display menus and entry of numerous commands. AS another example, it is important for the network administrator to be aware of the current status of all DCE servers in the environment. Known DCE management interfaces do not provide simple graphical presentation of server status, and thus administrators cannot easily retrieve information about them so as to facilitate and execute management actions. As a result, known DCE management schemes presently implement complex, text-based management interfaces that include unnecessary information that complicates the efficient management of DCE cells.
The present invention addresses this important problem.